I used last week's mark-making ideas to create a background, then painted two figures onto it (I also used the mark-making idea where you paint then strip off layers to give texture to the armour and hair.)

The idea is this is one character, and it shows her progression from peaceful potter to battered soldier. I do seem to be improving on this art thing, so I decided to experiment with photography a bit.

This was my first effort, using the modern zoom lens on the camera and the intelligent auto, which identified the image as 'portrait'. This was actually the one I ended up using above, once cropped, even though the wide angle of the lens has squished the image a bit, because the intelligent auto did a better job of the colour than I could manage manually. All of these are taken in artificial light because it's a horrible dark day here today and there's still very little light even though it's almost 11am. This was with the light opposite the image and the camera almost next to the light. I think the portrait mode has smoothed out the colours on the faces a bit, which is better than them being super-contrasty.

I tried a 50mm lens with the light above the image. This isn't so distorted, but the colours on the left look very washed out for some reason.

I tried again, slightly faster shutter speed and with a pale blanket under the image to reflect light back up. This was a mistake: it hugely accentuated barely-visible marks on the paint on the left hand face, and left the whole thing looking wrinkled.

If I had replied to this before, I might have read it properly! :-D I like the idea that the Feanorian supporters were the craftspeople, and the supporters of Fingolfin were more the political/noble types & more landed.